Mr. H.R. Fox-Bourne, the Secretary of the Aborigines Protection Society.
The author has not travelled in the country himself, but relies chiefly
upon the evidence of the late Mr. Edward Glave, at one time an official
of the Congo International Association, and of the late Mr. Sjöblom who
was a Swedish Missionary in the Congo. The book is not cheerful reading,
for indeed it is chiefly a record of crimes which have been committed in
the past.

It has been frequently stated that acting under the orders, or at least
with the connivance of the agents of the Congo State and those of the
Commercial Companies in the country, the native police or sentries have
punished in a most barbarous manner all those natives who refused to
work. It is alleged indeed, that these sentries have actually cut off
the hands of those who did not collect the rubber or food-stuff demanded
by the agents. To even read of such sickening horrors is terrible, and I
was therefore much relieved to find that none of the State officials on
board had ever seen natives maimed in that or any other manner by the
soldiers of the State. There seems however, to be no doubt that the
native chiefs in the past mutilated both the living and dead as
punishment for crime. Mgr. Derikx told me that he had heard of a case
where a chief had ordered that the hand of his own son should be cut off
because he had committed adultery with one of his numerous wives.

We arrived at Dakar, the capital of the French colony of Senegambia, at
daylight on July 3rd. Navigation is not easy here, for a reef runs
parallel to the coast and the channel between, is neither broad nor
deep. The town is built on the shores of a bay and faces an island
strongly fortified. The whole colony is being rapidly developed; a
railway runs to St. Louis and roads are being constructed across the
desert towards Timbuctoo and the northern coasts. A flourishing